Emergency personnel using robotic devices after firefighters were pulled back from the fallen structure due to unstable conditions checked the site for any further casualties, but officials said they believed all victims had been accounted for.“We have no reason to believe that this was anything other than a structural collapse,” City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell told reporters.
One person was pronounced dead on the scene, four more were taken to area hospitals for injuries and a sixth individual who was hurt declined medical treatment, said John Esposito, chief of fire operations for the New York City Fire Department.“This was an extremely dangerous situation for our firefighters,” he told a late-afternoon news briefing. Esposito said firefighters ordered out of the structure had still been inside conducting searches as “the building was continuing to collapse.
Firefighters work at the site of a collapsed parking garage in the Manhattan borough of New York City, US, April 18, 2023.A general view of a collapsed parking garage in the Manhattan borough of New York City, US, April 18, 2023.Pace University, a private college campus whose students, faculty and staff use the parking structure, was evacuated as a precaution, authorities said.